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Scientists Make First Complete Genome of Desert Locust

A farmer holds up handful of locusts that descended on a field in Byblos, north of Beirut, November 2, 2004. REUTERS/Sharif Karim
A farmer holds up handful of locusts that descended on a field in Byblos, north of Beirut, November 2, 2004. REUTERS/Sharif Karim
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Scientists Make First Complete Genome of Desert Locust

A farmer holds up handful of locusts that descended on a field in Byblos, north of Beirut, November 2, 2004. REUTERS/Sharif Karim
A farmer holds up handful of locusts that descended on a field in Byblos, north of Beirut, November 2, 2004. REUTERS/Sharif Karim

The first high-quality genome of the desert locust -- the most destructive migratory insect in the world -- has been produced by US Department of Agriculture Research Service scientists.

Genome is a set of genetic information stored in the DNA or RNA. Producing a genome requires samples with specific characteristics.

That locust was provided by chemical ecologist Baldwyn Torto with the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Nairobi, Kenya. He and his team tracked down swarms of locusts, collecting specimens across Kenya until he had two parents that he was able to breed to produce an offspring of known pedigree.

The scientists were able to go from sample collection to a final assembled genome in under 5 months. The desert locust is one of the largest insect genomes ever completed and it was all done from a single locust.

The genome of the desert locust is nearly three times the size of the human genome, explains entomologist Scott Geib with the ARS Tropical Crop and Commodity Protection Research Unit in Hawaii, and one of the team leaders. “We were concerned that, faced with this huge and very likely complex desert locust genome, it was going to be an extremely long and difficult job. However, we were able to go from sample collection to a final assembled genome in under 5 months,” he notes.

ARS has made the genome available to the international research community through the National Center for Biotechnology Information, to help fight this dangerous pest.

Desert locust plagues are cyclic and have been recorded since the times of the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt, as far back as 3200 B.C. They caused devastation in East Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia in the 2020-2022 season, threatening food security in many countries.

A small swarm can eat as much food in a day as would feed 35,000 people, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Current desert locust control mostly depends on locating swarms and spraying them with broad-spectrum pesticides. Ultimately, this genomics work could decrease dependence on such pesticides, using other measures that could be figured out after the determination of the genome, explains Scott Geib.

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'Incomprehensible': Red Cross Museum Fears Closure amid Swiss Funding Cuts

The collection houses around 30,000 objects as well as archives and the first Nobel Peace Prize medal, given to Red Cross founder Henry Dunant. Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP
The collection houses around 30,000 objects as well as archives and the first Nobel Peace Prize medal, given to Red Cross founder Henry Dunant. Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP
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'Incomprehensible': Red Cross Museum Fears Closure amid Swiss Funding Cuts

The collection houses around 30,000 objects as well as archives and the first Nobel Peace Prize medal, given to Red Cross founder Henry Dunant. Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP
The collection houses around 30,000 objects as well as archives and the first Nobel Peace Prize medal, given to Red Cross founder Henry Dunant. Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP

The Red Cross museum in Geneva is warning that it risks closure after its funding was axed in a broad government cost-cutting plan, with some suggesting it could be moved to Abu Dhabi.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum has been a national institution in Switzerland for nearly four decades, playing a key role in promoting and explaining international humanitarian law and principles in the birthplace of the Geneva Conventions.

Museum director Pascal Hufschmid said he was shocked to learn last September that the fate of the museum was, apparently inadvertently, being threatened by a small administrative measure in a government savings drive, AFP reported.

"It jeopardizes the very existence of the museum," the Swiss historian, who took the helm of the institution in 2019, told AFP in a recent interview.

The museum, built adjacent to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters, opened in 1988. It welcomes around 120,000 people annually, ranging from elementary school classes to visiting dignitaries.

It keeps a collection of around 30,000 objects, including the first Nobel Peace Prize medal, given in 1901 to Red Cross founder Henry Dunant, an award shared with the French pacifist Frederic Passy.

It also houses the archives of the ICRC's International Prisoners of War Agency, established to restore contact between people separated during World War I, which have been listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

'Incredible heritage'

"Through this incredible heritage," Hufschmid said, the aim is to create "a dialogue on what humanitarian action means on a daily basis".

He said the Swiss government had long recognized the value of the museum, and its role in telling "the story of an idea born in Switzerland, of major figures of Swiss history", like Dunant.

Since 1991, the private museum has received an annual subsidy from the Swiss foreign ministry of 1.1 million francs ($1.2 million), accounting for about a quarter of its overall budget.

But a general cost-cutting measure, proposed by a group of experts and approved by the government last September, included the decision to transfer responsibility for subsidizing the museum to the culture ministry.

At first, Hufschmid said he was not too concerned at what appeared to be merely an administrative change, until he realized "the transfer actually meant a major reduction of the subsidy".

This was because the culture ministry requires museums seeking its funding to take part in a competition, facing off against hundreds of other museums.

When successful, Hufschmid said, museums typically obtain a subsidy of "between five and seven percent of their expenses, (which) in our case would mean approximately 300,000 francs".

'Structural deficit'

"Suddenly, I understood that we would be facing a structural deficit starting 2027, (and) that we would have to close," he said, calling the situation "totally incomprehensible".

He said the government decision was taken as Switzerland marked the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Geneva Conventions, and amid warnings of dwindling respect for international humanitarian law.

Hufschmid has since been lobbying parliamentarians and decision-makers with ideas to save the museum.

The Geneva canton has stepped up its support, and parliamentarians both at the regional and national levels have voiced support for the institution -- but so far the threat of closure remains.

Hufschmid has proposed nationalization among other possible solutions.

Others have raised the possibility of moving the museum, with suggestions that Abu Dhabi, which hosts other museums including an outpost of the Louvre, could house its collection.

But Hufschmid said such a move "doesn't make any sense". "We were shocked when we heard that, because we are so deeply connected to Swiss identity, to Swiss heritage, to ideas born in Switzerland... (as) the depository state of the Geneva Conventions," he said.

"We are a Swiss museum and we will stay in Switzerland."